It’s been a while 😏

December – Christmas lunch 😋 January – Meeting Joe Wicks after turning up to one of his ‘morning run, jog or walk’ events in Spiceball Park, Banbury. February – My birthday trip out 😍

March – Homemade afternoon tea for Mothers’ Day 😋 April – A fruit baby and some lovely cakes at Robyn’s baby shower 👶 May – And another lovely cake for the King’s Coronation 👑

And then I was lucky enough to meet my beautiful granddaughter …

Bonfire Night

And then an ‘arty’ shot

Shame about England in the football World Cup ⚽️ I thought they played well. We won’t talk about Harry Kane’s penalty though 😱🤦🏼‍♀️

I still managed to enjoy the rest of the tournament. Some great games.

I had a special crumpet!

And Leah picked Argentina in a friend’s sweepstake, so winning a large homemade cheesecake for us to eat in the New Year 😋

Two weddings in one day – and I didn’t get to taste any of either of the lovely wedding cakes ☹️!

June to August, what a lovely Summer we had this year.

All that sunshine – and those temperatures! ☀️🥵

My baby became 30 😱 Some great celebrations which included a trip to London.

A stay in an amazing beach hut, followed by Covid 👎

Cornbury Festival and finally a visit to the National Memorial Arboretum, I’ve always wanted to see the Gift of Life Memorial.

Riverside Festival. A trip to Wembley Stadium – to see Coldplay. And then a delicious doughnut amongst other things, were enjoyed at the Big Feastival.

And that all fitted in with starting my new job too 💊🙂

And in July …

despite their earlier trauma, they still managed to give me some lovely flowers! 🙂

So on 1st June …

And on 13th June …

I received this as a present 🎁

I was looking forward to planting them as I’ve never had Cornflowers in my garden before.

Everything was included and it was very easy to do.

Fill the bucket with the compost to just under the rim. Add the seeds. Cover with remaining compost, water and keep moist. And wait for them to grow …

Which they did 😀

A week later, and they were starting to look great!

I had heard that thunderstorms and heavy rain was on the way so I thought I’d move my tiny cornflowers to a more sheltered corner of the garden to try and protect them a little.

But when I go out the next morning I find this 😡 (I moved him back out into the garden for photo purposes)

My little flowerpot man had fallen in the storm, but why did he have to fall right on top of my flowers? 😡☹️

So I sorted them out again as best as I could, trying to make them a bit more secure and smoothing the compost back over.

Poor things ☹️

So let’s see what happens now, I hope they are ok and start to recover. I’ll try and remember to keep you posted 🤞

A recent sunny evening walk 👣

It was so lovely to be out enjoying the fresh air on such a beautiful evening 🙂

I came across this lovely little clump of bluebells on a recent walk.

Did you know –

The bluebell has many names: English Bluebell, wild hyacinth, wood bell, bell bottle, Cuckoo’s Boots, wood hyacinth, Lady’s Nightcap and Witches’ Thimbles.

It is against the law to intentionally pick, uproot or destroy bluebells.

Almost half the world’s bluebells are found in the UK, they’re relatively rare in the rest of the world.

Bluebell colonies take a long time to establish, around 5-7 years from seed to flower.

Bluebells can take years to recover after footfall damage. If a bluebell’s leaves are crushed, they die back from lack of food as the leaves cannot photosynthesise.

And what about this one – All parts of the bluebell plant contain toxic glycosides, which are poisonous to humans and animals. Ingestion of any parts of the plant, whether flowers, leaves or bulbs, causes a lowering of the pulse rate, nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting and if consumed in large quantities may be fatal 😱

The bluebells in my own garden are now in full bloom 😍 (I must remember not to touch them!)

featuring Mini Eggs!

The weekend got off to a good start when I was handed this as soon as I got in from work on Good Friday!

Followed by a sunny evening walk 👣

There was time spent trying to sort out my new water feature 🤔

And then there were more yummy treats 😋

We were very lucky to have a whole Easter weekend that stayed dry and sunny ☀️ Our Bank Holiday’s usually feature rain 🌧

And I was also lucky to have so many Mini Eggs!